


Critical Error

by Burgie



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-05 14:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 12,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burgie/pseuds/Burgie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Vanellope hadn't caught Ralph in time when he created the beacon?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Falling. Chanting. Racing. Leaping. Missing..._   
_Watching him fall..._   
_Unable to help._   
_A game is doomed._

* * *

_____Beep. Beep. Beep._ _ _ _ _

“Ralph, please wake up.” Vanellope shuddered as another involuntary glitch ran through her. She only ever glitched when she was excited about something, and that included being scared. She’d never been more frightened than she was now, not even when he’d been chasing after her after she’d stolen his medal. Granted, he’d stolen the medal in the first place, but that hardly seemed important now. Nothing was important now except for the fact that he was lying on the large hospital bed that Felix had fixed for him. And he was hurt.

  
“You’re the fixing guy, why can’t you fix this?” she’d demanded of him, although he probably hadn’t been able to hear her with the way she’d been glitching all over the place.  
“I’m so sorry but this is bigger than even I can fix,” he’d informed her gently, placing a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her. Instead, she’d turned and ran back to this bed out in the open to be by his side. He’d been trying to save her game and, while he’d managed that, he’d almost killed himself in the process.  
There had been a lot of medical jargon used in the hospital when the striped pieces of candy had been examining the big guy for injuries. Third-degree cola burns, peanut brittle lodged in uncomfortable places, and the worst thing of all- coma. From what she’d been told, a coma was just a long sleep. Her questions of when he’d wake up went unanswered. So all she could do was sit by his side and urge him to wake up. According to convention, a princess was supposed to give her saviour a kiss. And she really wanted to. He just had to wake up first.

  
“He’ll be okay if you leave him for a while, you know,” Calhoun commented, coming up to stand beside her. “You don’t fight countless wars against the cybugs without having a few casualties.”

  
“I won’t leave him,” Vanellope mumbled. “I want him to be the first person he sees when he wakes up.”

  
“That sounds like something a girlfriend would say,” the sergeant noted. “But you’re just his friend, aren’t you?” Vanellope could only look at her for a few moments before turning her head away. She couldn’t face the older woman’s pity. Calhoun swore, probably without meaning to.

  
“I know it’s stupid and that he probably wouldn’t like a little girl like me but I got close to him, you know? And I never really realised it until...” she trailed off, the ending right in front of her. She wanted to hug him, be near him, but aside from his burns, her glitching might damage him somehow.

  
“Yeah, I get it,” the blonde sergeant nodded. “You never realise how much you love someone until they’re gone. Why do you think I’m so damn protective of Felix? He might have that golden hammer but he’s not invincible. I intend to teach him how to use a gun as soon as possible.”

  
“That’ll be a funny sight,” Vanellope snorted. “He always has that hammer so a gun’ll just look... weird.”

  
“Not as weird as being dead would look,” Calhoun figured. Vanellope glitched as she was uncomfortably reminded that she could have lost Ralph just like Calhoun had lost her first love. When she landed on the ground, having glitched through the chair, she tried to smile at the funny sight it must have been. It almost worked.

  
“Princess.” She sighed. And here was Sour Bill, still with that lollypop stuck to him. She giggled at the sight.

  
“Yes?” she asked, getting out from under the chair and brushing cocoa dust off her clothing.

  
“Your subjects are waiting to be addressed,” he droned.

  
“Alright, fine,” she accepted, and then turned to address Ralph as though he were still awake rather than... well, in a coma suffering from cola burns. “Don’t go anywhere while I’m gone.” Straightening up, she took a deep breath and glitched into her princess gown. Felix had fixed the finish line for her after the cybugs had flown into the beacon, and she’d reluctantly driven across it while tears blurred her vision. Regaining her former status as princess should have been a happy affair. But how could she be happy when the one she loved was hurt? Regardless, she’d managed to smile at the people bowing to her before she’d run off to get the candy nurses.

  
Now, as she walked back to them, everyone was bowing to her again. She smiled wanly, appreciating the change of her status from hobo to princess.

  
“Well, I suppose you’re wondering how things will change with me as princess again, huh?” she asked, and all around her heads started nodded.

  
“They won’t change that much,” she assured them. “We’ll still do the Random Roster Racers with the coins from winnings and I’ll still live in the castle. The main change will be that you’ll have to treat me better, that’s all.” She just wanted to get this over and done with. Ralph might be awake! “Are there any questions?” Her skin flickered blue, signalling that a glitch was closeby, and she narrowed her eyes at it. Glitching in front of her subjects was not a good way to show them that she was in charge now.

  
“Will you still be driving that abomination you and that big scary guy made?” Taffyta asked. Vanellope glared at her, causing the former bully to all but drop to her stomach in submission to her. She almost felt like laughing. Almost.

  
“Yes, Tafytta, I will still be using the kart Ralph and I made,” she informed her, not removing her glare from her. “Are there any other questions not involving Ralph?” She didn’t want to talk about him right now, not with her pixels acting all funny. “No? Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to something important.” She ran all the way back to Ralph to once more sit by his bedside with her pixels causing random glitches that got stronger until she finally teleported to be by his bedside. Once there, she broke down into tears at seeing him still lying on the bed, fast asleep. But he snored when he was asleep. Now, he just looked dead. She barely even registered Calhoun sympathetically handing her a box of tissues.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calhoun has a suggestion. Meanwhile, Vanellope has to attend to her duties as princess, whether she likes it or not.

_Crossing the finish line._

_A princess is restored to power._

_Tears streaming, pouring, anxiety mounting._

_Glitching everywhere, teleporting back to the once-friendly hideout._

_A princess broken-hearted._

* * *

“You know, apparently talking to someone while they’re in a coma helps them wake up.” Vanellope lifted her head from where it was laying on a small piece of mattress near Ralph and looked at the surprisingly-helpful sergeant.

“Really?” she asked, her voice husky from crying.

“Hey, it works for all my men,” Calhoun figured. “Granted, I usually tell them about battle strategies, but whatever you want to talk about with him is fine too. Just pretend he’s awake but can’t answer you. Can you do that?” She nodded.

“I suppose it’ll be better than sitting here crying and telling him to wake up,” she figured with a shrug. “And maybe it’ll be a chance to tell him how I feel. Like, practice it before I can tell him for real.”

“I guess that could work,” Calhoun nodded. “But if he wakes up after you tell him, it might be a bit awkward.”

“I know,” she smirked. “But if he does wake up, it’ll be because it surprised him.”

“Doubt it,” Calhoun snorted, and began walking away.

“Hey!” Vanellope jumped off her chair to stand looking at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” But the sergeant was already ‘flying’ away on her hover board. Huffing, she walked back to her spot and sat on her chair again with her knees drawn up to her chest. Resting her chin on her knees, she sighed. What was she supposed to talk to him about? The weather? In her game, the weather was ever-sunny except for in the ice cream zone.

“Princess, the gamers missed you today,” Bill droned. Vanellope continued staring at Ralph, refusing to look at the little sour ball.

“So?” she asked instead. The gamers had gone without her for years so surely one day wouldn’t matter. Even if it had been three days since she’d become princess again.

“Someone pointed out that you’re on the side of the cabinet so you should be in the game,” he continued. “She complained to Litwak.” Oh. Now, that was quite problematic.

“Well, what do you expect me to do? I can’t leave Ralph and have him wake up to nobody here,” she pointed out, finally turning to address him.

“Taffyta said you would say that,” he sighed, and walked away. Unsurprisingly, Taffyta was the next one to approach her.

“Look, I know he’s like your soul mate and everything, but your game can’t stop just because he’s hurt,” the former bully reasoned. “Even his game was suffering until Felix figured out how to rearrange the game’s code to make some other guy look like Ralph. And no offense but he hasn’t woken up all this time that you’ve been here so what makes you think he’s going to wake up while you’re gone?” Vanellope hadn’t thought of it that way before. But still, she wouldn’t give in.

“So why can’t you just make some other racer look like me?” Vanellope demanded, glitching in her exasperation.

“Because you have something no other racer has, Van- you can teleport,” Taffyta pointed out. “Like you always said, it’s in your code. And I thought that after being replaced, you wouldn’t want anyone else to take your place.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Vanellope relented. “But I still don’t want to leave him. Imagine if the guy you liked suddenly got hurt like this. Wouldn’t you want to stay by his side?”

“It’s different, Vanellope. You’re the ruler of Sugar Rush and I’m just a racer. The game needs you more than anyone or anything else does. Would you really sacrifice your game because of Ralph? He tried to save it and if you won’t come back, that’ll mean nothing. If the game’s unplugged and he wakes up, he won’t want to talk to you anymore or even look at you.” She hated to admit it, but Taffyta was right. Racing was in her code, so she had to race. And doing it would make Ralph happy when he woke up.

“Calhoun told me to talk to him,” she murmured absently. “Who’s going to do that now?”

“Oh, come on, Van, use your brain! You can tell him all about your day on the track,” Taffyta figured. “It’ll give you something to talk about and maybe it might just take your mind off the fact that he’s hurt.”

“Even if I have to race all day?” She was coming around to the idea, but slowly. Ralph was still the most important thing in the world to her.

“Especially if you have to race all day! The more you race, the more your mind will be taken off his suffering and the more you’ll have to tell him about. So, will you be in the Random Roster tonight? Bill’s announcing is downright miserable anyway,” she continued, eagerness written all over her grinning face.

“Alright, fine,” the princess decided with a nod. “I’ll do it. He worked so hard to get me to race so I’m gonna race as much as I can.”

“Yes! That’s the spirit!” Taffyta cried, jumping up and punching the air in excitement. “I’ll tell all the other racers that you’ll be in the Random Roster tonight.”

“Okay,” Vanellope smiled, and the racer ran off to spread the good news. Meanwhile, Vanellope returned to Ralph’s bedside. “Now, I won’t be here during the day tomorrow or for about ten minutes tonight for the Random Roster. But you’ll be okay while I’m not here, right? Just don’t wake up while I’m gone. Or do wake up, wake up as soon as possible, but try not to wake up until I get back. Okay?” Of course he wouldn’t answer, so she answered for him. “Okay. I’ll see you after the race. I love you.” For the first time, she leaned over and kissed him. And it felt alright, even though he couldn’t return it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A drama queen might just shake things up a little...

_She could hear him chanting something, but she couldn’t make out the words. All she knew was that he was falling and she had to save him. He was so big and strong that nothing could hurt him unless he let it. And now he was letting it in a big way._

_After jumping back into her kart, everything seemed to fade away. Diet Cola mountain wasn’t too far away, as long as she could just... A glitch brought on by the extreme fear she was feeling sent her far too close to the edge of the track and she swerved back across the road, her wheels kicking up large chunks of road due to the game’s current state. It was falling apart around her, and she swerved again to dodge a falling chunk of something. They sky itself was falling._

_A white, powdery shockwave radiated out from Diet Cola Mountain and she gasped as she realised what he was doing. He was going to make the mountain erupt, though she had no idea why._

_Why, why did he have to be a hero? And why wouldn’t her glitch settle down? Gritting her teeth, she found the track again and almost flew through the secret entrance to her old hideout. The track Ralph had made for her was so smooth, so the cybugs obviously hadn’t got here yet. Maybe that was why he was doing it. The entire mountain began to rumble as she zoomed around the track, and when she was halfway up the track she thought she’d make it. But then she felt a disturbance in her pixels. No! Not now, not now, not now!_

_Just when she didn’t need it, just when she thought she’d save the day, she glitched straight through him and landed on the other side of  the jump._

_“Finish the race!” she heard him call, or maybe it was her subconscious yelling at her. Whatever it was, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve and continued to the finish line. She noticed as she went that the cybugs were being drawn to something on Diet Cola Mountain. Crossing the finish line was the hardest part. She may have won the race but she lost someone very important to her._

* * *

Vanellope woke up on Ralph’s chest, noticing that her eyelashes, cheek and ‘pillow’ were damp and smelled slightly salty. She hadn’t had nightmares for a long time, not since her life as a glitch. Even then, those nightmares had been vague, with some sense of pain and the undeniable knowledge that she was a glitch. But at least she hadn’t glitched in her sleep this time, or if she had it hadn’t affected him badly.

“You always wake up after me anyway, sleepyhead,” she grinned at him, sitting up and working the stiffness out of her joints. Sleeping on another person did feel really good but it had its downsides too. Only on Ralph, those downsides weren’t quite so obvious.

“Hey there, Vanellope,” Felix greeted her chirpily as she walked through the doorway of the house-like structure he’d constructed for the patient to be kept in. He’d insisted on it after learning that she spent most of her time there, saying that it was no way for a little girl to live.

“Hey, Felix,” she grinned at him. It was hard not to be chipper around him. “Ralph’s still asleep, before you ask.”

“I thought as much,” the handyman nodded. “I’ll have to tell Markowski to cover for him again.”

“How would you manage that, though?” Vanellope wondered, tilting her head to the side curiously. She only knew of one way to make a character look like another character...

“I talked to Sour Bill about it,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “Our game won’t survive long with our villain gone. And even if what Turbo did was horrible, you have to admit that it could be used a little more constructively.”

“True,” Vanellope allowed, but she still didn’t feel entirely okay with it. “But what if Markowski likes taking Ralph’s place? Aren’t you worried that he’ll go Turbo?” She shivered slightly at the thought of one of Calhoun’s gun-toting soldiers taking over games as the racer had.

“Don’t worry, Tammy’s got that under control,” Felix assured her with a slight chuckle. “She’s only too happy to punish him if he steps over the line.”

“I can imagine,” Vanellope giggled. “Anyway, I’ve gotta get going to make sure my kart’s in a good condition to race. Saturdays are always busy.” She’d heard some gamers yesterday talking about meeting each other after school the following day until one of them had informed the other that the next day was Saturday.

“Well, I was only coming to check on Ralph but seeing as the big guy’s still out, I’ll just head back to my game,” Felix agreed. “I guess I’ll see you some other time, maybe tomorrow morning because Tammy and I have a date tonight.”

“Sounds nice,” Vanellope smiled at him. “I wish I could have a date night but my date’s in there asleep.” She only realised what she’d said as soon as she’d said it, and she heard someone gasping. Turning around, she saw Rancis there looking very shocked. “Oh, hey Rancis.” He didn’t say anything, just shot a dirty look at the house containing the wrecker and ran away.

“I wouldn’t mind having a double date with my best buddy and his girl,” Felix agreed, seemingly ignoring Rancis’ reaction. “He might have a little competition though. Rancis looked pretty upset.”

“Oh, he’ll get over it,” Vanellope assured him with a roll of his eyes. “Rancis is just a diva who likes making a big show of things. You watch, he’ll be serenading me after the race today.” Felix chuckled.

“Okay then, take care,” he said to her, waving goodbye as he started to run towards the rainbow road leading out of Sugar Rush. Vanellope waved back at him and continued on her way to the track, stopping in at the garage to get her kart before taking her place and checking to make sure everything was fine. As the race began, her worries seemed to fade into insignificance for the thrill of the race. It was, after all, in her code.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's worried about Vanellope. Meanwhile, Ralph is changing, but is it a good change?

Vanellope returned to the makeshift hospital after a long day of racing and yawned as she flopped down on the unconscious form of her ‘stinkbrain’. She thought that she heard him grunt at her action, but she told herself that it was just wishful thinking.

“Y’know, when you wake up, you’ll have to watch me race sometime,” she commented, rolling over onto her stomach and looking at his face that was so peaceful in sleep. “Today I came first in almost all of my races except for the first one because I got overexcited and crashed into a jawbreaker. But don’t worry, I’m fine. The kart didn’t look too good but Felix fixed it for me. Good ol’ Felix can fix almost anything.” Her face fell slightly at the reminder of that but she shook her head, determined not to let it get her down.

“Anyway, after my spectacular crash, Bill didn’t want me to keep racing. For a sour candy, he sure does have a big heart. But I wanted to race so after he locked me in my room for my own safety, I snuck out. I wasn’t even on the roster today but racing as an NPC is even better in a way ‘cos then I can do whatever I want!” She giggled and rubbed her face against his chest. It was getting softer, she’d noticed, but that was nothing to worry about. “You’re getting fat from laying around all day,” she giggled. Her eyes were closing and she yawned again.

“Princess, come back to the castle to sleep.” She groaned at Sour Bill’s suggestion.

“No,” she snapped, snuggling into her comfy Ralph-bed like an insolent child (which she was, in a way). “I’m perfectly fine sleeping here.” He groaned, and she echoed it before shooting him her most poisonous glare. He simply blinked at her.

“Princess, if you insist on spending every night with him, would you like me to get someone to move him to the castle?” Bill suggested. His persistence was his way of showing that he cared.

“Calhoun said not to move him or he’d be even worse,” she informed him, not moving from where she was curled up.

“Is she really one to tell you about the healing process?” he drawled. “You know that she kills every day in her game.”

“I could kill in this game too if I so pleased.” Vanellope giggled at the acid tone Calhoun spoke with. She sounded sourer than the candy she was speaking to. “Now, you sour little brat, leave the girl alone. Can’t you see she’s tired?” She swatted at Sour Bill and he sighed and moved away, back towards the castle.

“Good riddance,” Vanellope commented, rolling over to look at the blonde sergeant. “Thanks for getting rid of him for me. He never would’ve left otherwise.”

“I like him about as much as the next person,” Tamora shrugged, eliciting a giggle from the little princess. “He is right, though. You aren’t getting much sleep out here.”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep alone not knowing if he was still there if I was in my castle, either,” Vanellope admitted, lifting her head to look at the sleeping Ralph. He looked more like he was sleeping now, not pale and corpse-like as he had been before. “At least there’s no beeping anymore, though.”

“What does the beeping even mean?” Calhoun wondered, her brow furrowing. “I’ve never heard it in my game before except in the hospital. I thought it was the beeping of some machine.”

“Do you see any machines around here?” Vanellope pointed out, stretching a hand out to gesture to the very bare room. “I don’t know what it was but it wasn’t a machine, that’s for sure.”

“I’ll ask Felix later,” the sergeant decided. “He’ll know for sure.” With a smile, she looked at the now-sleeping Vanellope and left her to go find her husband.

* * *

 

She found Felix in their apartment, relaxing on their bed after a long day at work fixing the apartment that Markowski was surprisingly good at wrecking. The holidays were busy for anyone in the arcade, but some characters had to do more work than others. In a first-person shooter like Hero’s Duty, for example, the only person who really had work to do was the gamer. But characters controlled by gamers were worked until they could barely muster the strength to do anything once the arcade closed.

“Rough day?” she asked, sitting on the side of the bed and resting a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he agreed, inclining his head in a slight nod. “You’re lucky in your game, Tammy.”

“Only if I get someone who knows how to play the game,” she corrected him with a smile. She would’ve put a few more choice words in there but she felt compelled to speak less harshly when she was around Felix. He was just that good of an influence. And a part of her that she liked to keep hidden even from herself didn’t want to lose him.

“That would help,” he chuckled, looking at her with mirth gleaming in his blue eyes. “How’s Vanellope handling the holiday rush?” He had a right to ask, considering it was the first one the racer had participated in.

“She’s exhausted,” Calhoun chuckled. “Poor little thing fell asleep on Ralph’s chest almost as soon as I got there. That reminds me, what does beeping mean?”

“Beeping?” Felix echoed. “What kind of beeping?”

“Like the kind of beeping a hospital machine makes,” she tried to clarify, and tried to imitate the sound. Felix, to his credit, didn’t laugh as he saw the very serious expression on his wife’s face.

“Oh, that’s just the sound a game makes when it’s healing someone,” he informed her. But when he saw his wife’s slightly worried expression, he didn’t feel quite so calm.

“And if the game was making that sound when Ralph first got hurt?” she asked, feeling completely lost. She always felt so young and vulnerable when she didn’t know something about the arcade. She still sometimes had nightmares that someone would go turbo in her own game.

“Don’t tell Vanellope but it means he’s part of the game now,” Felix replied, rubbing the back of his neck nervously as he sat up. “I don’t know what to do but at least it explains why I couldn’t fix him- the game was fixing him.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some mysteries crop up. Meanwhile, Ralph is changing.

_This place was very strange. It had started out dark, but then blue suddenly jumped in and made everything brighter. Ralph was confused. He didn’t know anything but he knew that it was his name. It was in his code._

_“What is your name?” the voice was bodiless, coming from everywhere at once._

_“Ralph,” he replied. He felt like there should have been more to his name, but just when he thought he had it, there was a flash of blue code and he couldn’t remember it._

_“And your title?” the voice prompted._

_“What title?” Ralph asked, but then he remembered. “Racin’ Ralph.”_

_“Ah. You will be the princess’ betrothed. You will remember all of this when you wake up but not our little conversation.”_

_“If you say so,” Ralph shrugged. He looked at the blue code of his body and noticed it forming into limbs, hands, and feet. He was a little large, but his stature was still quite small. Reaching up, he ran a hand through his scruffy brown hair. It was quite soft. And then there was a jolt as code rushed into his body and the place disappeared._

* * *

 

“Surge? Can you lend a buddy a hand?” Felix asked the seemingly-empty gate to Sugar Rush. The Surge Protector appeared as suddenly as he always did, clipboard in hand.

“Hello, Felix,” the blue man greeted him happily. Due to Felix’s excellent track record with coming and going between games, the two had become quite good friends. “How can I help you?”

“Well, what do you know about games fixing characters from other games?” Felix asked, hoping that he’d worded his question in a way that the intelligent Surge Protector would understand.

“It’s quite rare but it has happened where a game that was repairing itself has repaired a mortally injured character,” the blue man responded quite clinically. “Why? Is that why Ralph hasn’t been bothering me lately?”

“Yes,” Felix nodded slowly. “He almost killed himself in Sugar Rush and now the game’s made him a part of it.”

“I didn’t think a wrecker would fit in with a game like that,” Surge remarked. “I assume you want to fix it?”

“Naturally,” Felix chuckled. “So how would we go about fixing it?” The Surge Protector hummed thoughtfully, a sound not unlike the humming of electricity.

“I think I know how but only the princess will be able to do it,” Surge responded. “Can you bring her here to talk to me?”

“I can try,” he nodded. “Tammy says Vanellope won’t be moved from Ralph’s side but surely she’ll come if it’ll fix him. She wants him fixed more than anyone else does.”

“Whatever happens, Felix, he can’t be allowed to cross the finish line or he’ll become a character permanently,” Surge warned him as the handyman started for Sugar Rush. “Do not let him race.”

“I won’t let you down,” Felix promised, saluting as he picked up the pace. Tamora fell into step beside him with the ease of someone who was used to catching up with people.

“Did Surge give you your answer?” she asked him hopefully.

“Yep,” Felix nodded. “We have to get Vanellope to come to Surge so he can tell her what to do but we can’t let Ralph race. If he does, there’s no getting him back.”

“Good luck with that,” Tamora scoffed. “I couldn’t even convince her to leave his side. Bill says that she even sleeps there.”

“I’m sure that she’ll leave him if it means he’ll go back to being Ralph,” Felix assured her. “If she loves him as much as you say she does, she’ll do anything.”

In the structure that Felix had built for Ralph, the wrecker’s large finger twitched. And then it was surrounded by a blue glow. The glow slowly surrounded his whole body until he looked like Vanellope before she glitched. When he glitched, though, it wasn’t just a temporary rearrangement of pixels. His whole body changed to that of a small, blocky racer. And only then did he open his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh I completely forgot about this fanfic on this site. Good thing I received Kudos otherwise I never would've remembered!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ralph wakes up and Felix and Tamora give Vanellope the news that she has to see Surge.

Vanellope blinked and squinted, the bright blue flash having dazzled her.

“Ralph?” she questioned, rubbing her eyes. Was there really a racer lying on the bed where he’d been, or were her eyes tricking her?

“Yeah,” he answered, sitting up. His voice was a lot younger to match his new form, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that he looked different. He was awake!

“Ralph!” she cried, and flew to jump on top of him. The action had no effect on him, meaning that his strength had made it into this form as well. She hugged him and had to resist the urge to kiss his face out of sheer excitement.

“You silly old hobo, you had me scared that you weren’t going to wake up,” she grinned at him. “Do you remember anything?”

“Not really,” he admitted after searching his mind for a memory of how he’d ended up here. “How did I get here?”

“You made a beacon and I tried to catch you but I glitched and ruined everything,” she recounted to him. “It’s my fault that you’re like this.”

“Now, hold on there. How can someone as harmless as you ruin everything?” he counselled her, and she smiled. He wouldn’t have normally said something like that but she guessed that it had something to do with the injuries from the volcano.

“Yeah, I guess it really was Turbo’s fault,” she figured with a shrug. “But you must be hungry after sleeping for so long. Come with me and we’ll go back to the castle.”

“Is it our castle?” he asked, surprising her.

“If you want it to be,” she replied, feeling her cheeks heat up. It would be nice to have Ralph living there with her, so she could call it theirs.

“Well, it should be considering we’re married,” he commented, and that left her more shocked than anything.

“What?!” she screeched, whirling to face him. “We’re not married, not even close to that. Did you hear what I said when you were sleeping and then take it the wrong way or something?” She was frightened now and Ralph could see that, so he changed tack.

“I must’ve, yeah,” he nodded, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry if I scared you. Are we still going to the castle, though?”

“Yes,” she nodded, a smile returning to her features, and she took his hand and walked with him to the castle. Normally she would’ve rode on his shoulder but hand-holding felt better anyway.

At the castle, Vanellope ordered a banquet for her recovering friend. Or maybe he was her boyfriend now but she could ask him that later. To her surprise, he ate a whole chocolate cake. Was he so hungry that he’d eat chocolate now?

“Do you want to go for a walk now?” he asked once he’d polished off three whole cakes, several platters of cookies, and an entire jug of soda.

“If you can still walk after eating all that,” she giggled, and jumped up to walk with him out of the castle. Having not walked much at all, she worried that he’d take her too far, but to her relief he instead took her to a field of marshmallows. They were soft, much softer than anything else in the whole arcade. Ralph seemed to find them particularly comfortable as he stretched out on his back beside Vanellope.

“You look different,” she finally admitted. “You sound different, too. Why is that?” Only silence greeted her words. Glancing over at him, she saw that he was asleep. Smiling softly, she watched him sleeping for a few moments before inching closer to him and wrapping her arms around his smaller form.

* * *

 

“Bill said that we’d find them out here. She really does look exhausted, doesn’t she?” Felix commented.

“Well, she’s paler than usual,” Tamora agreed. “No wonder Bill’s so worried about her. If anything, I’d say she looks sick.”

“Characters don’t get sick, unless it’s a virus. Do you think it’s a virus?” he asked, looking with concern at his wife.

“How am I supposed to know? My game’s the youngest out of everyone’s,” she replied, but the thought had crossed her mind too. “I’m not programmed to be motherly but I’m worried about her.”

“I think it suits you, Tam,” Felix commented, smiling up at her.

“Honey glows,” the sergeant muttered, and playfully punched him. It was her lightest punch but he still had to use the hammer on himself. “Anyway, we can’t tell her when Ralph’s around. Then we’d be as bad as everyone who called Vanellope a glitch.”

“We’d have a good reason for calling him a glitch, but you’re right that it wouldn’t be right,” Felix conceded. “How do we get her away from him, though?”

“Why don’t you wake her?” Sour Bill suggested. He hadn’t left them and had in fact been listening to their entire conversation.

“I dunno, she hasn’t been getting enough sleep as it is and it’s hard to wake one without waking the other when they’re lying together like that,” Tamora pointed out. “She might be a lighter sleeper than him, though.”

“It’s worth a try,” Felix figured. “And if he does wake up, we’ll just say that we want to speak to her in private. Ralph was never nosy apart from spying on everyone at the apartment every night.”

“Could you blame him?” Tamora commented. “He lived in a dump, watching the apartment’s going-ons was his only entertainment.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Felix nodded. “We’ve gotta stop stalling and wake Vanellope, though. I’ll try waking her.”

“Good luck,” Tamora smirked. “She’s pretty hard to wake up, or so Bill says.”

“It’s true,” Bill confirmed. “If it’s just a nap, though, she should wake up easily enough.”

“Vanellope,” Felix said softly, shaking her gently. “C’mon, kid, wake up. I’ve gotta tell you something in private.”

“It’s too early,” the small racer groaned, but got up anyway. She smiled down at the sleeping Ralph and then walked away with Felix. “What is it?”

“Well, you may have noticed that Ralph is just a little...”

“Strange?” She finished for him. “Yeah, I noticed that too. He thought he was my husband for some reason.”

“And I’m sure you hated that,” Felix joked at her blush. “Anyway, I talked to Surge and he said that the game’s made Ralph a part of it. If he races, he’ll be part of the game forever.”

“Will that be such a bad thing?” Vanellope wondered. “He doesn’t really fit in with your game. He’s the bad guy and he’s treated like that even after the arcade closes. But here, he’s happy. He fits in.”

“I know and if everyone in my game was like me, he’d be treated a lot better. But I’ll talk to them and they’ll come around to seeing that he’s not such a bad guy. As for why he can’t stay here, well, Markowski’s a good replacement but eventually he’ll have to go back to his own game or we’ll have a marine who hates his villain role and nobody wants that,” Felix explained.

“Sooner or later, the gamers will notice a marine missing,” Tamora agreed. “It’s for the good of everyone’s games, Vanellope. Markowski likes his new game but if he likes it too much, he might go turbo.”

“I guess you’re right,” Vanellope mumbled, looking suddenly downcast. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Surge wants you to see him,” Felix informed her. “He’ll be right outside your gate, you just have to call him.”

“Alright,” she nodded. “He’s in my place now, isn’t he? He’s the glitch who can’t race even though it’s in his code and we have to ruin his life.” She sniffled, rubbed her watering eyes on her hoodie sleeve, and ran for the garage where her kart was kept. She’d see Surge, but first she had to race.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the headcanon that Felix and Tamora see Vanellope as their daughter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanellope gets the information she needs to fix things. But someone isn't happy at all about her relationship with Ralph and helps bring out something she didn't know...

Finally, after several laps on all of the tracks, Vanellope returned her kart to the royal garage and began the slow hike up rainbow road to the gate of her game. She was stalling, not for lack of wanting to see Surge but for fear that the gate wouldn’t let her out. She trembled as she neared the gate and began to repeat her old mantra to herself: “Not a glitch, just got pixlexia. Not a glitch, not a glitch, not...” She stepped through without any resistance. But the relief was short-lived as she remembered her reason for coming out here.

“Surge?” she called uncertainly. “Felix said to meet you out here.”

“You must be Vanellope,” he commented, appearing in front of her and causing her to squeak in surprise.

“Yes, I am,” she nodded. “I’m the princess of Sugar Rush. Why did you want to see me?”

“Well, I’ve heard that your friend Ralph has been changed by your game. You need to do something to fix it but, due to new security procedures put in place after the last time a game was invaded, I’ll need to transfer the data straight to you,” he explained. Vanellope, to her credit, didn’t understand a lot of what he said but simply nodded.

“What do I have to do?” she asked, looking up at him. He was so tall.

“The data transfer is simple- hold out your hand and I have to use this to transfer the data safely,” he replied, holding out what looked like a medicinal needle. She’d seen it used a few times before.

“Will it hurt?” she asked after holding out a small, slightly trembling hand.

“Now, how would I know that?” Surge responded in what passed for sarcasm from him. He smiled and the needle did hurt slightly as it pricked Vanellope’s skin but soon she felt a rush of data that she couldn’t really make sense of. It gave her more of a feeling of what to do rather than any information- effectively in her code, just like racing was.

“Are we done now?” she asked, shoving her hands back in her hoodie pockets. “I have a kingdom to run. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.”

“Yes. Everyone’s got something better to be doing rather than talking to the Surge Protector,” Surge summed up, nodding as he pocketed the syringe. “You can go now, Vanellope.”

“Thank you,” she nodded, and walked back into her game. Funny, she hadn’t felt like showing respect to authority before this. Maybe something had been in that needle...

Back in her game, Vanellope wished that she’d brought her kart to drive back to the castle in. If Ralph was awake, he’d be wondering where she was. And even if he wasn’t, she still wanted to be with him. It was strange that he loved her, yes, but wasn’t it every girl’s dream to have her crush love her as well? She was so busy daydreaming that she almost walked into Felix.

“Woah there, watch where you’re going,” he chuckled, holding his hands out.

“Sorry, Felix,” she giggled. “I was thinking about Ralph.”

“I thought so. You had a serious case of the honey-glows,” he informed her with a grin, and she reddened even more.

“Speaking of which, is he awake?” she asked.

“I think so. You’d better go see,” Felix told her, and she nodded and ran on towards the castle.

* * *

 

“Unbelievable. She’s already invited you into her private garden?” Ralph’s first instinct upon awaking to that voice was to hurt the owner of it. It wasn’t in his code but was rather in the strange memory that he couldn’t access. He had a feeling that this guy was bad, but how bad could a small boy be?

“Who are you and why do you have a problem with where I am?” Ralph asked, looking around in confusion until his gaze finally alighted on a small blonde boy. He looked quite feminine for a boy, at least in Ralph’s opinion.

“Me? I’m Rancis Fluggerbutter, the second-best racer on the track. I’m probably the third-best now that the princess is back but she hasn’t been on her game lately. You’ve been distracting her, dragging her down. Fitting for a villain such as yourself,” the boy explained, seemingly-unconsciously smoothing down the lock of hair that curled across his brow.

“That name means nothing to me. And as for the princess, she can make her own decisions,” Ralph retorted, jumping to his feet. The ground shook slightly when he landed, and the boy almost fell but righted himself and dusted imaginary dust from his leather jacket.

“Well, the name should mean something to you or it will now because we are rivals in the field of love,” Rancis informed him in quite a dramatic fashion. Ralph blinked in confusion but understanding slowly seeped through his code.

“You’re in love with her,” he stated. “You won’t win, you know. It’s in my code to love her, just like it’s in my code to race.”

“What?” Both racers turned to see Vanellope standing in the doorway at the back of the castle, looking confused. Humour and sadness flickered across her face in the form of a glitch.

“Vanellope,” they both started, but she glared at Rancis, directed a sad look at Ralph, and glitched away somewhere.

“Now you’ve gone and upset her. F- get lost, both of you! Little brats,” Tamora muttered as the two racers startled at her voice and then ran in opposite directions. Still muttering angrily, the sergeant started for Diet Cola Mountain where she knew the little princess would have gone to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More motherly Tamora! There'll be plenty in the next chapter.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tamora cheers up Vanellope, or at least tries to.

Why had she come back here? This place was the source of her heartache, the scene where she’d failed and ruined everything. But still Vanellope curled up on her cake bed and let the tears come. With all of the candy wrappers on her, she probably looked as pathetic as she felt. There had been something strange about Ralph after all! Why hadn’t she listened to that little voice that said something wasn’t right? How could Ralph love someone as broken and worthless as herself?

Tamora saw the candy wrappers shaking and knew that there was a crying little girl under them. Her heart went out to her. Hadn’t she cried like that for the first few nights after she’d had to kill the Cybug with the face of her fiancé? And now Vanellope had to do virtually the same thing- kill an abomination of her lover. Of course, she didn’t know the whole of it, but she could relate.

“Hey, kid. I know it’s bad now but it’ll get better,” Tamora started. She hadn’t known that she possessed such a soothing tone of voice. “I know it’s because of Ralph and Rancis but what’s wrong? You can tell me.”

“I thought he loved me.” The voice was followed by a small black-haired head poking out from beneath the wrappers. “Isn’t that sad? I thought that he really loved me. But it’s just the way the game coded him.” She punched the bed and Tamora was surprised that the bed was affected by it.

“Hey now, you’ve gotta make him not exist anyway. Won’t it help, knowing that he doesn’t truly love you?”

“No! It makes it worse!” she shouted, crawling out from under her wrappers. “If I keep things as they are, he’ll at least love me. But if I change things, he won’t love me anymore.”

“And what if he does?” Tamora asked. “He risked his life for you, his game for you. Doesn’t that say anything about how he feels about you?”

“What if he was just doing it to prove himself?” she worried, looking up at the sergeant. She could see the care written in her concerned features and that made her feel just a little better. At least, enough to stop crying as hard as she had been.

“That might be the reason but I think he really does like you,” Tamora soothed her. On an impulse, she reached out and drew the little girl to her, holding her close in an attempt to comfort her. Her armour couldn’t have made that comfortable on the racer but it was the thought that counted. “If the game made him coded to like you, there had to have been some basis of love.”

“How do you know?” she sniffled. “Your game’s only a few weeks old.”

“I know,” Tamora nodded sadly. “I’m always reminded of that from other characters and from my own experiences. I didn’t even know what a game regenerating someone sounded like, or about the Surge Protector. Good thing Felix is all too ready to tell me everything I need to know.”

“He looks after you,” Vanellope summed up. “I’m sorry I missed your wedding, by the way.”

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t expect someone so upset to want to see what they couldn’t have,” Tamora dismissed. “We’ll have another ceremony when this is all over.”

“I think you’ll have to anyway,” Vanellope admitted. “I feel like what I have to do will erase everyone’s memory but mine. And everyone who was here when the accident happened needs to be here again.”

“What did Surge do to you?” Tamora wondered. “He couldn’t have told you what to do or you’d be able to tell me.”

“He injected something into my hand, I think it was code of some sort,” Vanellope told her. “He said it was a security thing.”

“Makes sense,” Tamora nodded. “After Turbo, he can’t trust anyone with code information.”

“That’s exactly what he said,” Vanellope confirmed. “That reminds me, I think what I have to do might bring Turbo back.”

“I’ll be ready to stop him if he tries to leave the game,” Tamora assured her, touching the gun on her hip. “He won’t hurt you on my watch.”

“Thanks but you won’t remember that when I do what I have to do,” Vanellope smiled wanly. “I’m so worried about what I have to do. What if I mess up and ruin everything? I’m a glitch, it’s in my code to mess up.”

“Hey now, you don’t mess things up,” Tamora corrected her. “You make mistakes, sure, but everyone does. Turbo made you a glitch but all that did was make you unstable and you couldn’t leave the game. You’re many things, Vanellope, but you are not a screw-up.” And she hugged her firmly, as if to prove that she meant what she said.

“Thanks,” Vanellope smiled. “I guess I’ll have to get my glitch under control, though. If I have to do something, I want to be able to do it without messing everything up. I’ll do it right.”

“Right,” the sergeant nodded, and patted her on the back. “Are you okay now? Or do I have to go make Ralph and Rancis sorry they ever made you cry?”

“I’m okay,” Vanellope giggled. “Thanks, Tamora.”

“Call me Tammy,” the sergeant insisted. Everyone she saw as close friends and family was allowed to call her that, and at the moment that only included Felix and Vanellope.

“Okay, Tammy,” Vanellope nodded. “I have a glitch to get under control.”

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it,” Tamora decided, and left the princess’ hideout. At least she’d succeeded in cheering up a little girl who really needed it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something more sinister is afoot...

Surge monitored the goings-on of every game as part of his job description. Yet in all his years of service, he’d never seen a situation quite like the one that Sugar Rush was currently presenting him with.

“What the...” The blue man peered closer at the stream of data. It seemed to suddenly keep erasing itself even as it kept going. He had to go a little deeper, so he went right into the game’s coderoom. He couldn’t do what Vanellope had to do but he could observe. Sometimes it made his job easier but other times it was why he hated his job. What he saw surprised him.

“Felix!” he cried, startling the handyman as he came out of his game. “I’ve just found out something about Sugar Rush. Vanellope needs to fix it as soon as possible or a virus will wipe out the entire game.”

“Well, Tammy’s just been talking to her last night so she should be right on track,” Felix informed him. “What’s wrong?”

“Just tell her to come see me,” the blue man directed him. “Tell her it’s urgent and if she doesn’t see me, she could be erased from her game.”

“Okay,” Felix nodded, worried now. If Vanellope was deleted, he and Tamora would lose the closest thing they could ever get to having a daughter.

* * *

 

Vanellope fell again, landing on the peanut brittle ground of Diet Cola Mountain. Groaning, she got up and dusted herself off. She felt so weak but she had to keep practising glitching herself over the jump or she’d never be able to glitch an entire kart across. Glitching had never made her weak before.

“Okay, new plan,” she said to herself, standing on unsteady legs. “Maybe I shouldn’t think of Ralph to ground me because it just makes my glitch even worse.” So she began the slow trek back up the road to the jump. And when she was standing on the edge of the wafers, she almost fell straight into the boiling cola. When she fell back, a small body caught her.

“Woah there, you shouldn’t be going anywhere in your condition,” Felix counselled her, feeling her sag against him. “You’re exhausted! What have you been doing?”

“Practicing glitching,” she murmured tiredly. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open anymore.

“Does it normally make you this tired?” Felix wondered.

“No,” she answered.

“Surge was right,” he commented, worry making him move faster. “She’s not in good shape at all.” Holding the sleeping girl in his arms, Felix ran for Game Central like a father taking his daughter to the emergency room.

* * *

 

A prick in her hand woke her up and Vanellope looked up at Surge from where she still lay in Felix’s arms.

“What was that for?” she asked, rubbing her eyes and blinking sleepily.

“You’re infected with a virus,” Surge informed her. Gasping, Vanellope woke up more at that but still didn’t have the energy to move.

“But how?” she asked, trying to pinpoint a moment where she could’ve got infected.

“I’m not sure but it has something to do with what’s currently going on in your game,” Surge explained. “You have to go into the coderoom and do what the data says or you’ll be erased and the virus will slowly consume the game.”

“But can I do that when I’m so weak?” she asked. “And I still haven’t got my glitch perfect so I can save Ralph this time.”

“Believe in yourself and you can do it,” Felix suggested, looking down at her. “But just do it quickly before you can’t do anything.”

“Just tell me, does it have anything to do with my glitch?” she wondered.

“Yes, it’s something to do with your glitch and Ralph. At the moment when you started losing your code, which is what the virus is doing to you, a glitch caused part of your code to jump into Ralph,” Surge explained, not even trying to lighten the blow. “It’s been slowly going from you to him since then.”

“So it’s a matter of life or death now,” Vanellope figured. “Way to ruin things. I ruin everything.”

“No you don’t,” Felix was quick to correct her. “Accidents happen, Vanellope. This was a big one but it could’ve happened to anyone at any time. It could’ve even happened before this.”

“If you say so,” she sighed. “I suppose I’d better get back to my game and fix things, then.”

“You can fix it,” Felix assured her, and chuckled. “I’ll carry you back to the castle. You’re in no state to walk.”

“In the meantime, Vanellope, whatever you do, do not glitch,” Surge emphasised. “The more you glitch, the faster you’ll fade.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “No glitching. Got it.” On the way back to the castle, she fell asleep again and didn’t even wake up when Felix took her to her bedroom and laid her down on the bed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fixing things isn't as simple as Vanellope first thought.

While the two racers had run off at Calhoun’s threatening voice and gestures, they hadn’t gone very far. Instead, in the middle of the road, they’d come together again to fight.

“How did you even become a racer, anyway? Can you even race?” Rancis taunted him, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Of course I can! It’s in my code,” Ralph retorted, balling his hands into fists. “As for the how, well, that’s not important.”

“Will you tell the princess how you became a racer?” Rancis asked. “It’s not right to keep secrets from the one you love. Or maybe you don’t know, unless you don’t love her as much as you say you do.” Growling, Ralph swung one of his large fists and it connected with Rancis’ cheek, leaving a red mark.

“Of course I love her but I don’t know how I became a racer,” Ralph admitted.

“Are you stupid to know that?” Rancis smirked, and spat out a tooth. He was baiting him and they both knew it, but Ralph took the bait anyway. He hit Rancis again, knocking him to the ground.

“Yes, that’s right, scare her away by being the brute you really are,” the racer urged him, a knowing grin on his face.

“Why don’t you fight back, then? Are you too much of a girl to stand up for yourself? Or you might ruin your precious manicure,” Ralph teased. The racer’s fingernails were quite well-groomed and shiny, after all.

“Fine,” Rancis huffed, his cheeks colouring. So he swung back his arm and slapped Ralph across the face. The blockier racer only laughed before hitting Rancis in the chest with enough force to send him flying into a tree on the side of the road.

The strangest thing happened, then- a blue glow surrounded Ralph and stretched towards Rancis, drawing code from the unconscious racer. The virus grinned and moved on, feeling stronger although he was confused as to why the game wasn’t fixing the hand-mark on his cheek as it fixed Rancis’ injuries.

* * *

 

Vanellope finally woke up after sleeping through the entire day and then the night. She was glad that she hadn’t entered the Random Roster Race, or she’d be in trouble. When she did wake up, though, she felt weaker somehow. Her skin was definitely paler now, as were her clothes. And she was still tired despite the long sleep, but, remembering Surge’s instructions, she managed to get up. Stumbling over to the door of her bedroom, she leaned heavily on the doorframe.

“Felix? Tammy?” she called, her voice quavering like that of a sick child. Soon enough, she heard footsteps, and one of Tamora’s men appeared.

“The arcade’s open so they’re not here right now, but Sergeant Calhoun put a lot of her men in charge of guarding you,” he explained, and she nodded in understanding.

“Okay, that’s fine,” she nodded. “Hopefully today I should be able to fix this thing.” And she made her careful way down a few stairs before the soldier picked her up and carried her down the rest of them.

“Where to, princess?” he asked, standing in the throne room.

“I’ll be alright from here,” she informed him, and he set her down gently. On trembling legs, the princess made her way to the throne and then through the curtain behind it. She remembered the entry code easily, so at least that wasn’t fading. In an instant, Sour Bill was beside her and helped her tie the licorice rope around her waist. She hoped that it wouldn’t fade away, and that she’d be strong enough to swim through the code room to the place she sought out.

Seeing the icons of the various different racers and aspects of the game was a little unsettling, but she didn’t dwell on it. Instead, she floated over to one icon in particular- system memory. It was where Turbo had gone before her to tamper with the citizen’s and racer’s memories. That thought upset her and she glitched, but this time her body returned to normal much slower than it used to. It begun a cycle of fear-induced glitching, one that left her so weak she could barely lift a finger. Surge had been right about the danger of glitching, then. She closed her eyes for just a moment.

* * *

 

Her bedroom again.

“What the...?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Her ‘parents’ were here now, so at least she knew that it was past closing time.

“Bill said that you fainted yesterday,” Felix informed her. “He had to drag you out of the code room by the rope. What happened?”

“I just closed my eyes,” she murmured. She wasn’t capable of speaking much louder than a murmur of a mumble. “And I thought of how Turbo made me a glitch in the first place and it made me scared. Then my body came back slower and I kinda freaked out.”

“Sounds like you’d better get a move on then, kiddo. You’re the only one who can access the code room,” Tamora commented after sharing a worried look with her husband.

“I know, I’ve just gotta get control of this glitch,” she growled, punching her mattress. It barely made an indent.

“Try focusing on the task at hand,” Tamora suggested. “I use that tactic a lot when fighting Cybugs. My men use it too.”

“Okay, I’ll give it my best shot,” Vanellope decided with a nod. “I wish I could see Ralph again but he’s not the real Ralph.” At the memory of him, her form blurred into code again and she heard both ‘parents’ gasp. Her form came back slower than ever.

“Don’t think about Ralph,” Felix suggested. “When you do this, you’ll be able to see him, the real him, every day for the rest of your life.”

“Okay,” she smiled. That thought giving her strength, the princess managed to walk to the code room herself and tie the rope around her waist this time. And then she entered the inner parts of the game, remembering to keep her mind on the task at hand.

* * *

 

“Making a kart should be easy enough,” the former wrecker murmured to himself, walking into the room with the large red button in the centre. He stepped onto it, selected a kart, and began the baking process that was far too easy. After Rancis had mentioned his lack of a kart and knowledge to race, he’d decided to learn how to race no matter how long it took him. And in the meantime, he had plenty of sources of extra strength- the limp forms of several other racers attested to this.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a race against time as Vanellope grows ever weaker and the virus becomes ever stronger.

_Stop her! She’s trying to destroy you._

_Why would my betrothed try to destroy me?_

_She doesn’t want you to race because you’d best her._

_So what should I do? How should I stop her?_

_Use your newfound power. She’s in the code-room behind the curtain behind the throne. She cannot erase the memory of when you came to be or you will cease to exist._

* * *

Vanellope floated over to the icon that she knew, in her code, she had to tap. After double-tapping memory, a few other icons came up. ‘Delete system memory’, ‘erase scores’, ‘citizens memory’, ‘racers memory’, and ‘select data to erase’. She double-tapped this last one and was faced with several more options, all involving times and dates. She reached towards one in particular but froze before she could double-tap it. She wondered why but then saw her hand turn to code. She hadn’t felt a glitch coming on...

Turning, she saw R- no, the virus, he wasn’t her Ralph standing in the doorway. A line of blue was stretching from him to her, causing code to follow the string over to him.

“Let go!” she screamed, trying to wrench herself away from him. But the blue string followed her. It seemed to be attached to the licorice rope. So, steeling herself, she reached towards the rope to unravel it. But her hands wouldn’t work while they were code and kept going through the rope.

 _‘Racing, Vanellope, think of racing’_ , she thought to herself, and finally her form stabilised enough so she could untie the rope and just float in front of the icons. She heard the virus roar in displeasure at finding the rope empty, but before she could get too scared she found the date and time she needed again and tapped it once. Before she could tap it again, the virus used the rope to float over to her. Its form was becoming unstable, looking less Ralph-like. This gave her comfort and strength.

“Why are you trying to destroy me? I thought you loved me,” the virus spoke to her as it grabbed her ankle. She felt drained as the code flowed from her into him. She was aware that this was the worst place to glitch- code could easily get lost and corrupt the game in here.

“You’re not my Ralph!” she spat at it. “My Ralph, the real Ralph, wouldn’t ever hurt me.” She managed to tug her foot from its grasp but then floated away with nothing to tether her. She made panicked swimming motions, feeling her strength continue to drain as she did so, but there was no other way to get around in the code room.

“You’re right,” the virus confirmed, its voice eerily like distorted sound. “I’m going to take over your game, though. And after that, all of the games in the arcade.” It cackled and pushed her with enough force to send her flying through several more icons, which moved out of her way as she flew past them. She swam frantically for the area she’d been at before but soon her strength gave out and she could only float and cry.

* * *

 

With the little problem out of the way for now, the virus could happily go about perfecting the art of racing. His feet, he soon found, were a little too large for the pedals, but that just made it easier to keep his foot flat to the floor with the pedal wedged between them. His hands, too, were too large for the steering wheel, but that didn’t matter too much. He just knew that he had to cross the finish line.

“Where are you going?” he asked a mint-themed racer.

“Oh, the Random Roster Race is starting soon,” she informed him. After consulting the voice, the virus found out that he first needed a coin to enter the race. So he returned to the castle, found a coin in a bedroom, and made it to the track in time for the Random Roster Race.

“Ladies and gentleman,” the sour candy informed them, “the princess cannot be here today due to illness but fear not, we will still have the Random Roster Race.” He sighed and continued, informing the racers that they had to throw their coin into the trophy. When it was the virus’ turn, he grinned as the coin went in and took his place behind the starting line.

* * *

 

“There she is.”

“Oh my land. Vanellope! Vanellope, wake up!”

The princess of Sugar Rush slowly blinked her eyes open when the voices of Felix and Tamora reached her ears. She was still floating in the code room but now had the strength to slowly swim towards the voices.

“Vanellope, no! You have to go to the time codes,” Tamora guided her. Now she remembered and nodded, swimming towards the icons with renewed vigour. As she went, she passed the trophy icon and couldn’t resist having a peek inside.

“What are you doing?” Felix worried, worrying his hat in his hands. He could fix it after.

“I have to know how much time I have,” she murmured, double-tapping the icon. Scrolling through the various coins in it, she found her own coin. Patting her stocking where she normally stashed it for safekeeping, she gasped. He was going to race. She had to stop him, and soon. But her fear, once again, had the opposite effect she needed. She glitched and ended up in the trophy, surprised at being there. But she quickly climbed out and jumped, being caught just in time by Tamora on her hover-board.

“Kid, you’ve gotta try not to glitch in there,” the older woman warned her gently.

“Never mind that, just get me there. He’s gonna race and if I don’t stop him, it’s game over,” she mumbled. Looking at her hands, she noticed that she had a green tint to her skin. Her code was showing. She had to hurry.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanellope finally performs her duty and this time she has to do it right.

At last, Vanellope once more floated in front of the data icons. This was it, the last chance she’d have. She could feel in her code that if she failed again, she wouldn’t have the strength to try again. She’d be too weak and her code would probably start disappearing. She managed to hold off a fear-induced glitch and double-tapped the first icon. The second one was as easy as the first. But when she reached the final one that Ralph had pulled her away from before, the stress got to her. This time, she remembered to ‘swim’ away from any open icons.

If she erased the game’s memory, would the scores be affected? Would the gamers complain to Litwak, putting her game in danger? Would she really remember the feelings she’d developed for Ralph? Would they still manage to destroy Turbo? Would Felix and Tamora still be her adopted parents? She shivered with glitches.

“Kid!” Tamora swam over to her, looking quite out-of-place, but she was just the person Vanellope needed to see. Seeing Ralph would’ve been even better, though. “You’ve gotta stop worrying and just do it.” The sergeant grabbed her by the soldiers and, oddly enough, the glitches stopped.

“Did I give my glitches to you?” she wondered, looking at her greenish hands.

“Nope. The armour in my game is specially designed to not be affected by other programming so we can’t merge with the Cybugs. I made that change myself. It’s absorbing, them, though, just until you calm down,” Tamora explained. Vanellope nodded and closed her eyes, focusing on calming herself down.

“If I do this, you and Felix won’t remember me. You won’t see me as your daughter anymore,” she finally admitted, tears welling up in her eyes.

“We’ll still remember you, kiddo. And we’ve always seen you like that,” Tamora assured her, hugging her. “Now, get over there and get your man back.” Vanellope smiled and pulled away, her form becoming steadier now. She floated back over and looked back once to see her ‘mother’ still watching her. And then she reached towards the final icon and double-tapped it.

* * *

 

The virus was sucked into a vortex right before he crossed the finish line, as was everything else. It screamed in indignation but was erased. All of Sugar Rush returned to the state it had been in under King Candy’s rule, including the princess herself.

Her code felt odd. Had she succeeded? Were things back to normal? Her eyes felt heavy but they obeyed her instruction to open and she found herself in the Fungeon. _Yes!_ But she couldn’t celebrate, considering it was neither the time nor the place. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She wondered when Ralph would get here, as well as why she hadn’t been taken to the moments before Ralph had created the beacon. But she supposed that it was the last place when she’d been still enough to safely return without driving off the track or falling or some other game-altering thing.

Hours passed and she’d grown first bored and then despondent. How far had she gone back? Days? Years? Back when she’d first become a glitch? The glitch-proof shackle was starting to hurt and she leaned her head on her hands, looking sadly at the ground.

 _Boom._ She looked up, a grin threatening to break out. So she chewed her lip instead. But she was so happy! He was here! Her stinkbrain had come to rescue her! She remembered now that the first time, it had made her feel like a damsel in distress. But this time, she felt loved.

* * *

 

“Turbo-tastic.” She was sliding towards the rock wall and remembered with a jolt that she hadn’t had time to master the art of glitching on command. Everything slowed down as she muttered to herself, concentrating hard to bring on a glitch. And... it... worked! She laughed at the shocked expression on his face and continued on her way to the finish line. She almost wanted to see him get eaten by the Cybug but didn’t have time to lose. It was Ralph-saving time.

* * *

 

The fear she felt this time was twice the fear she’d felt before. There was so much riding on this moment, and she had no time to lose. So this time she stole Crumbelina’s kart, considering it was the fastest. She remembered the way to Diet Cola Mountain so well, especially considering it had been her old hideaway. The track that Ralph had made for her wasn’t too hard on this kart, thankfully, and she managed to get to the jump right on time. And this time, she glitched in the right place to catch Ralph on the front of the kart. That was another reason why she’d chosen it- Crumbelina’s kart was a little tougher than all the rest.

She couldn’t stop smiling but couldn’t slow down, either. She barely even had to think to glitch through the wall of her hideaway.

* * *

 

This time when she rolled across the finish line and it lit up in red-and-white checkers, she wasn’t as upset as she’d been the first time. Everyone was safe, Turbo was gone forever, and she was once more a rightful princess again. No, that didn’t sound right. She’d lived through so much that it had made her grow up a little. So she made a decision. President Vanellope von Schweetz had a nice ring to it, anyway.

“You know, you could just stay here and live in the castle,” she told Ralph, hugging him tightly. “You could have your own room where nobody could ever treat you badly again. You could be happy.” She knew there were tears in her eyes but after all this, why wouldn’t there be?

“I’m already happy,” he replied. It sounded so good to hear his real voice again. “I’ve got the coolest friend in the world.” She blushed, averting her gaze so he wouldn’t see the slight disappointment in her eyes. Well, at least ‘friends’ was a start, they could be more eventually, right? “Besides, I’ve got a job to do. It might not be as fancy as being president, but it’s my duty. And it’s a big duty.” She giggled, still so happy to have him back and also at his joke. They continued trading friendly insults until Felix called him, and then she let the other racers, her friends, drag her away from him as they both parted ways. But she would see him again every day for as long as their games stayed plugged in- after all, their cabinets were facing each other.


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they all lived happily ever after.

The Fix-it-Calhoun wedding was beautiful. And for the first time, Vanellope was okay with wearing her princess dress- the only other time she wore it was when she announced the Random Roster Race every night. And, she was happy to see, Ralph looked very good in a suit. It made her wonder for a moment what it would be like if it was her wedding. But she quickly discarded that thought and instead shifted the mildly-uncomfortable dress. It didn’t help that Ralph was looking at her.

After the wedding in Hero’s Duty, the reception was held in Fix-it Felix Jr. Because everyone else had changed out of their wedding clothes, Vanellope could finally wear the clothes she was more comfortable in. Now she wouldn’t feel so awkward about Ralph seeing her. Meanwhile, Ralph still wore suit for lack of anything better to wear.

“Want some cake? Mary’s a good cook.” She smiled up at him and then her eyes landed on the overly-large slice of cake he was offering her.

“Some cake? That’s a whole lot of cake,” she giggled. “But sure, I’ll have some.”

“Well, actually this is my slice but I figured I’d share it with you,” Ralph clarified. “I don’t wanna seem like a bad party guest by eating this huge slice all by myself.”

“Okay,” Vanellope nodded, and accepted the smaller but still quite large piece of cake that he broke off for her with a fork. Oddly enough, the cake seemed to separate into squares. But she didn’t question it and instead ate it.

“Well, what do you think?” Ralph asked, obviously seeing her delighted expression.

“I think I should get Mary to come into my game and cook for me,” Vanellope replied, causing him to laugh. “Or maybe I’ll come over here more often just to get some cake.”

“Well, she cooks for Felix a lot and if he’s gonna be your dad, you’ll get plenty of food from Mary,” the wrecker informed her. Felix and Calhoun had both mentioned earlier in their wedding speech that they were adopting Vanellope as their daughter. Not much would change, but it was still an important announcement.

“Really?” Vanellope gasped happily. “That’s great!” And she made her way into the party to locate Mary to thank her in person.

As the party finally wound down later that night, Vanellope returned to her game so her parents could spend the first night as a married couple alone. She knew exactly what that would entail, thanks to accidentally walking into Tappers once when she’d first stepped outside of her game. So she’d have to sleep in her castle on her own, like she had every night for the two weeks since she’d become princess and then president.

When she got to her castle, though, someone was waiting for her.

“Ralph?” she questioned, seeing him standing on the welcome mat ready to knock. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was feeling kinda lonely and you were having fun with everyone else at the party so I figured I’d come over here and talk to you on your own later,” he explained. He looked and sounded nervous, which was worrying until Vanellope remembered her earlier thoughts. Could it be?

“What are you saying?” she asked, stepping closer to him. Her princess dress would be perfect for a moment like this but there was no time to change.

“I’m saying that I might like you like a knight in shining armour likes a princess,” Ralph replied, running a slightly trembling hand through his hair.

“Say it,” Vanellope dared him, her pounding heart making her body tremble with excitement.

“You know what I mean but fine, Miss President: I love you,” he admitted, speaking quieter at the end.

“Good enough,” Vanellope smiled, and glitched into the hand that he had resting on the ground. And then he raised her up and kissed her.

She had her Ralph, her family, and her title as president. What more could a girl want?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so this story comes to an end but there is a sequel called Toffee Shards that will only be on FF.net (I have the same penname there) because it's a collaboration with another user on that site. Thanks for reading!


End file.
